Recently I bought a copy of Tony Robbins latest book, Money, Master the Game. It is not a typical read for someone looking for nuggets on project delivery, but it is a great read.

One of the great quotes that I picked up is:

“Success leaves clues”

What’s that all about, I hear you say? Well, it is telling you that when you take on a new challenge, you will not be the very first person to have ever taken this challenge on. Many people before you would have faced the same or a simliar challenge. Some would have struggled, some would have given up, while others would have persevered and been successful. It is the latter group that you should focus your initial research time upon and seek to learn from the clues that their success left behind.

People who have successfully delivered results typically follow a process. The common threads of these processes are:

1. What specifically is the project or challenge that you want to take on?Spend some time being as specific as you can be and write down as much detail as you can about the project/challenge.
2. Why is it so important to you?Why is the project important? Is it related to health, wealth, happiness or something else? Don’t always stop with the first answer? Keep asking yourself “why” until you get to the real driver. Then write this down.
3. What obstacles do you expect to encounter?Based on your particular circumstances and environment, what are the real obstacles that you expect you will encounter and need to overcome? What is your plan to overcome them?
4. What daily actions do you need to take in order to move towards a successful outcome for your project?

As Mark Twain said, you must first break the project down into smaller actionable tasks and start. Have you documented how you will break the work down (your work breakdown structure).

All of the above should be written into a simple one or two page document (referred to as the Project Brief). The project brief is a powerful tool as it is your roadmap for delivering the project.

Lessons Learned

On a side note of learning from others success in general, there are a lot of great annual reviews out there as well as plans for 2015. Two that I particularly like are:

• Nathan Barry
• Chris Guillebeau

Why not read a couple of chapter from my book, Get Projects Done.

Subscribe to my mailing list and I will send you the first two chapters free.